The moment a frantic woman heard 911 dispatcher SNORING as she tried to get help for her husband who couldn't breathe

A woman in Montgomery County, Maryland, was horrified when she called 911 and heard the dispatcher snoring as she frantically tried to get an ambulance for her husband who was having trouble breathing.

The sleeping firefighter's snores could be heard in a recording of the call, cutting through another operator's attempts to help the woman.

The dispatcher snoozes for more than four minutes when he wakes up and realizes someone is on the other line.

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Trouble: The dispatcher, who was the only one who could summon and ambulance, slept for four minutes on the 911 call

NBC 4in Washington, DC, reports that the ambulance dispatcher, whose name was not released, was 17 hours into a mandatory 24-hour overtime shift.

Montgomery County Fire and Rescue is the only ambulance service in the Washington area that requires such long shifts. Washington, DC, dispatchers work 10 hours. Others have shifts have as long.

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The woman called 911 just after midnight April 4 because her husband was having trouble breathing and had started turning blue. The 911 operator transferred her to the ambulance dispatcher, who had apparently fallen asleep.

'Hello?' the desperate woman asks three times. She gets no response.

The 911 operator, realizing that the woman wasn't getting any response from the ambulance service, breaks in to the phone call to try to wake the firefighter up.

Long day: The 911 dispatchers in Montgomery County, Maryland, work 24-hour shifts, which union representative Jeffrey Buddle supports

'OK, hold on one second ma'am. Let me try to get them on the line again,' he says.

A third person gets on the line to give instructions to the woman, but he can only help from afar. The sleeping firefighter is the only one who can dispatch an ambulance.

'Put one hand on his forehand, the other hand underneath his neck and tilt his head back," the new emergency operator tells the woman.'

'Yes,' she responds.

Suddenly, a snore interrupts the call. The firefighter is now snoring into the open phone line.

He snores at least 18 times before he finally rousts himself and demands the woman's address so he can send an ambulance, the TV station reports.

The firefighter was suspended with pay as the fire department investigates the incident.

However, Jeffrey Buddle, of the local firefighters union, says the 24-hour shifts are not the problem.

'it may seem like a long shift to someone who’s not used to that schedule, it’s something that's just normal for a firefighter to work,' he told NBC 4.

The woman's husband was eventually taken to the hospital and survived the incident.